More on Ryan’s pictures

I’ve been working on picture pages to print for my mother and enjoying some of Ryan’s choices. He was asking everyone to make a funny face for the camera – and there are some pretty interesting ones in his collection, for sure.

Anyway, there, among Ryan’s pictures, was one of a section of my mother’s bookcase that holds a picture of my dad in his WWII pilot’s get-up, next to a bear in the same garb – leather jacket and helmet, white silk scarf and goggles. That isn’t a typical smile for him (my dad, not the bear); he usually had a more grim look on his face in his pictures, a result, he claimed, of teasing by all his older siblings about his smile or his nose or his ears or something every time a camera appeared in his youth. But my mother says she loves the picture now, because he looks happy and hopeful.

I’m glad Ryan asked people to make funny faces. We’ll look happy and hopeful for years to come. Well, OK – silly is as good, isn’t it?